Do Your Bit to Keep Him Fit

We have a new collection on the digital library that I am really excited about. Almost as excited as I was about the very first collection we ever published but not quite because that was a huge accomplishment. Nothing will ever beat it but this one is pretty cool. 

The Minnie Fisher Cunningham is the collected papers of the national suffrage representative from Texas. She successfully lobbied congress for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Her pivotal work ensured passage. After the amendment was ratified she organizes the National League of Women Voters. How cool was that?

The suffragettes started on this path 40 years before with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and while voting rights was their ultimate goal they put additional effort into social welfare, child labor laws and school reform also. They just plain RAWKED!

One of the major social problems that affected World War I soldiers was venereal disease, with the predominant one being syphilis. At this time there was medication to cure it if caught in time and a way to test for it before it became so far advanced that it couldn't be cured.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham kept thousands of documents some of which are pamphlets from national and local governments about health information. These are another fantastic bit of social and public history. And, they are pretty funny too.

Is his hat not the bomb? I'd wear that. I've got a brown casual skirt and jacket that would look great with it. I've got nothing to wear with the gun though.

It looks to me that this pamphlet was printed to take all the fun out of being a soldier to me.

Isn't prophylactic treatment after you've been exposed a little like closing the barn door after the cows have gotten out?

I love the line; "falling prey to the hordes of street-walking prostitutes who are probably even now crowding like vultures into your community." 

Is Free Lance Prostitute a pun?

It seems that some of those hordes were plying their trade openly in a district set apart for that purpose.

Wait a minute? Didn't they just say that to put the girls out of business? How do they plan to provide all those soldiers with entertainment?

Bowling alleys, libraries, and churches? How do those compete with sex to an 18 to 20 year old boy, out of his own, most likely for the first time?

Important information from your Sub-Committee For civilian Cooperation in Combating Venereal Diseases.

There you go, a bit of social history for your Wednesday.

Love,
M

PS: I just realized that I'll probably get some strange search strings off this post.